Parts I and II surveyed the origins of vicarious warfare in both history and the American experience up to the end of the Cold War. This has allowed us to better understand both the practical and conceptual foundations of this form of war. The discussion revealed that although to an extent vicarious warfare might be understood as the offspring of a unique strategic context defined principally by the long war against terror, in fact it represents something more fundamental and enduring. That analysis also provided us with partial clues regarding the factors that might have contributed to its emergence. The remaining chapters in Part III take these ideas forward into the contemporary post-Cold War context.

Vicarious warfare has come to dominate American strategic practice over the last decade, but in its contemporary form it emerged out of developments apparent since at least the early 1990s, and in certain areas well before that. Therefore, in order to properly understand and explain the phenomenon as it confronts us today, we need to account (in this chapter) for the multiple factors driving its modern adoption. Chapter 6 then charts its gradual emergence over recent decades, in terms of both military practice and as an increasingly coherent and influential tradition of war vying for influence in decision-making circles. Finally, Chapter 7 considers some of the prominent strategic consequences arising from the prosecution of vicarious warfare over recent times.

As should be apparent from the foregoing chapters, no single factor can explain the emergence of vicarious warfare as a prominent mode of US warmaking. Some accounts present these developments simply as a direct reaction to the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars or as narrowly associated with the ‘War on Terror’. We have already established the attractiveness of vicarious approaches during so-called inter-war periods. But, while certainly important, that perspective overlooks important trends predating the 2000s and the use of vicarious approaches in missions beyond countering terrorist threats. This suggests deeper factors and forces are at work. In fact, the story is one that can only be told by accounting for multiple converging threads including underlying structural continuities, progressively evolving social, organizational and normative conditions, changing political and strategic contexts, and the impact of more immediate events and circumstances.